A few days ago I posted in this thread stating that the introduction of childish pandas were the cause of wow hemorrhaging subs, and I got infracted for it.

I guess you can't state your opinion on these forums unless your a mindless fanboy

It's specifically stating "childish pandas", if you can find a way to describe that idea without saying "childish" which doesn't have a very concrete meaning, then post that and you won't be infracted and your opinion will be more clearly expressed. It's a win win.

]There is no sole reason as there is no sole reason people play this game;

However I've got my ideas and the ways they can be fixed;

-PvP:
PvP isn't even balanced at the moment nor has it been all expansion. FoTM is at it's absolute worst with leveling being as easy as it is and certain classes just dominate the ladder. Not playing the 1-3 classes that are OP? Have fun pushing rating.
And that's all PvP is now; rating and arenas.
Want the mount (which outside WoTLK: Has been the only armored drakes you can get)? Better have the highest rating in US. Want the tabard? OH - You need to be in that range as well. Want anything? Better be in the 3-4% of the population who breaks 2k. Might even be lower.

The 100 wins mount was just a bandaid; but the focus on nothing but HIGH rated play and the decline of it overall is probably a good reason people aren't bothering and are leaving.

Also the whole "they haven't changed much of anything since BC" thing applies.
"Tradition" has made PvP boring. I have more fun spamming random BG's because nothing is on the line. Most "PvP"ers I know now won't touch rated play.
RBG's at least gets extra points for having a reward every step of the way and sticking to titles as the biggest rewards.

Alienation and focus on the 1% is killing PvP now that they're less fun.

-PvE:
It's essentially been the same thing with a few new moves for the past decade. Even longer if you were playing other MMORPG's before WoW.
You can only do the same thing so many times before it's just insanity.
There is also an extreme amount of "choice" to the point it's probably not that healthy. I love Flex - I've done HM raiding but do we seriously need 4 tiers of difficulty for one raid?
I'm also in the boat that LFR is burning people out and that Flex should replace it - but that's nothing more than opinion. LFR's probably saved more "casual" subs but may have hit "hardcore" ones. And one playerbase is much larger than the other.

There's not much that can be done over people quitting for PvE. They're doing as much as they can and their PvE is their strength in this game.

-Lore:
MoP did alright with this. Plenty happened in game but they've still continued to focus a lot of major changes in books and outside sources.
The world doesn't feel too terribly dynamic - and although they tried to fix this with the Vale - they need to do a hell of a lot more with this.
It seems like with the MoP interviews from last Blizzcon they're starting to notice this and they have the software to make and change the world quicker

One big issue I've had recently is that the villains this expansion are just flavor of the patch. There's little build up and we knew Garrosh was going to be the end boss before the expansion. If they give us something we have to fight against for a long period of time and we become attached to...I can see things going better.
(Lich King and Illidan being very good examples; but those were around in WC3. We need new characters and they need to be built up over expansions or patches - not just a few raid clears.)

If they decide to do more in game like they did with the Vale and do it with things the fans actually want - I can see them actually bringing folks back.
Azshara and the Burning Legion being the two most requested things right around this time.

You know, WoW cartoonish game styled graphics is the reason i keep playing, it's in my opinion better then any MMORPG. (personal opinion)

Agree with this so much. Everyone went crazy over the realism of the AOC graphics.. but whenever I played it, everything just looked muddy brown.

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People need to stop looking at subs, and instead look at revenues. WOW has not lost many western subs at all. Revenues were steady and even up in some quarters when they lost subs.

The majority of the subs that were lost were from China, and because of a f2p MMO that came out recently that was made in china and highly marketed there. WOW did not lose $15/month subscribers, instead they lost the casual, by-the-hour players from the east. Proof is in the revenues.

1. People just don't have enough time to put into WoW, because it's an endless game. (By that I mean a game you won't finish in 24 hours and put aside)
2. The game has been around for almost 10 years, and people just want something else to play.

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MOBA games took over the playerbase that WoW took from the Counter-Strike or whatever the youngsters played before WoW.
And I don't consider it as a bad thing at all. Sure good people have left but most of the people were the "baddies" who really didn't fit in the game.
For example; I had like 6-7 friends of mine playing back in Wrath and now I have 2. The ones who quit were people with 5 days a week trainings, people with 8-12 hours jobs and a guy who always let everyone know how he hated fantasy and everything related (he only played because of random BGs with his girlfreind). I don't really think they could of get into the game fully. WoW takes a lot of your time and eventually it pays out.
Not everyone isn't up for that.

The amount of people on the servers is the problem though but I see they've been working on that with the Connection realms thingy, hope it works out.

For PvP to be fair classes need to be precisely and exactly balanced. Right now it's like playing poker where one player gets 4 cards and another player gets 6 cards.... and they're playing for cash (ranking).

Obviously players saying this are referring to beating the first version of pve content and not the subsequent difficulties. Deliberately misunderstanding that doesn't change that the first bar of success is so low people will trip over it and then awkwardly excuse themselves pretending they meant to trip.

Taking a fresh character through the leveling zones isn't challenging, then the first level of difficulty is equally unchallenging. If that first bit doesn't hook players, why on earth would they stick around for the next bit?

This is one of my problems with the current dev teams attitude. Doing the same content on progressively more difficult levels is a very niche ´progression´ model. While some players like it, for most players it is just the same content. When Garrosh dies on Flex, that was enough for me... and there are a ton of players who say the same thing about LFR.

While Naxx 1.0 was probably one extreme where content was made for very few players.. now we are at the other extreme where every piece of content that gets made has to have 15 different ways to do it.

1) Subscription. There are a ton of MMOs that can be played without a monthly subscription. In order to justify a monthly a game has to be very special and wonderful. Fewer people see WoW as special and wonderful, hence fewer are willing to pay a $180 a year subscription.

2) More of the same. . For 8 years or so each expansion has brought a few new levels, a new race or class or both, a new big boss, a few new zones, more dungeons and raids not much different than the last. I just unsubscribed and won't be back unless the next expansion really brings something new and exciting to the game.

1) Subscription. There are a ton of MMOs that can be played without a monthly subscription. In order to justify a monthly a game has to be very special and wonderful. Fewer people see WoW as special and wonderful, hence fewer are willing to pay a $180 a year subscription.

2) More of the same. . For 8 years or so each expansion has brought a few new levels, a new race or class or both, a new big boss, a few new zones, more dungeons and raids not much different than the last. I just unsubscribed and won't be back unless the next expansion really brings something new and exciting to the game.

So pretty much the same thing every game company does when releasing an expansion?

1) The game won't attract many new players, they may get immediatly turned off by the outdated graphics. Most of the new players are friends from people who already play WoW for a time, and managed to get them interested

2) Most of the old playerbase who played during Vanilla and TBC grew up and lost interest after playing for so long. Most of the people still playing are probably people who have invested way too much time into their characters, and don't feel like leaving all that progress behind

The story lines are not engaging, the lore is getting weaker and weaker, dungeons and raids are a shadow of what they used to be (been happening for a while now though so not too surprised). Also with MoP and the massive grind fest that the entire game has. I would of expected it in a free to play game where you can buy boosts. That's acceptable to me, but to have such a stupid grind and gating for pretty much anything you really need, with no way to fast track it (least at the start, changed slightly with comendations) turned off many people, enough for them to just not come back.

Also the blatently obvious attempt to grab and keep the asian fanbase kinda failed as, from memory, that is where the majority of the subs have decreased from as a region.

The dated graphics, raid design and dungeon design, lack of real direction and poorly designed pet battles (as in reason to progress with it) has also made people turn off and unsub.

For me personally MoP is the only xpac that I have unsubbed with. Every 3-4 months I'll resub for a month to see whats changed, see nothing new or interesting has happened, and unsub again. I had high hopes for flex raiding but SoO is just boring to me personally, however I never liked Garrosh or that story lineso realistically I was jnever going to like the raid anyways, even if it was att he same level of Uld.

The story lines are not engaging, the lore is getting weaker and weaker, dungeons and raids are a shadow of what they used to be (been happening for a while now though so not too surprised). Also with MoP and the massive grind fest that the entire game has. I would of expected it in a free to play game where you can buy boosts. That's acceptable to me, but to have such a stupid grind and gating for pretty much anything you really need, with no way to fast track it (least at the start, changed slightly with comendations) turned off many people, enough for them to just not come back.

Also the blatently obvious attempt to grab and keep the asian fanbase kinda failed as, from memory, that is where the majority of the subs have decreased from as a region.

The dated graphics, raid design and dungeon design, lack of real direction and poorly designed pet battles (as in reason to progress with it) has also made people turn off and unsub.

For me personally MoP is the only xpac that I have unsubbed with. Every 3-4 months I'll resub for a month to see whats changed, see nothing new or interesting has happened, and unsub again. I had high hopes for flex raiding but SoO is just boring to me personally, however I never liked Garrosh or that story lineso realistically I was jnever going to like the raid anyways, even if it was att he same level of Uld.

You had valid reasons befoe you came into raids/dungeons. Have you played any of the other MMORPGs and their dungeons? Lol.

The only thing that keeps me playing is the system, the game has a rock solid game play system, how everything works.

Some mmorpgs with super nice graphics is about all they have, take aion and tera nothing but gutted grind-fest asian games that just feel broken and have no plot or reason to play past lvl 5 "both were P2P and are now F2P" I got both C.E. when they started as P2P.

Sure WoW's graphics are dated but that's okay, the game play and story keep you there, I started my warcrafting at the good old age of 12 with WC2 tides of darkness and I was like this is so cool, screw being a human because I am so the horde was and still is my thing, I am 30 now. I also played diablo 1 and starcraft 1 as well, the pc/console game market sucked in 1996 as some of us can remember. Not everything has to be PS3/4 and xbox ##### level to be enjoyable but some of you are used to that being younger and only knowing what you know and what you are used to.

I do believe in character models getting a upgrade only because they started it with Illidan's custom model then faction leaders, you can't help but get jealous looking at them. WoW 2 or w/e would basically be nothing more than WoW with starcraft 2 graphics that's all.